Dylan Thomas

Komorebi: Sunshine filtering through trees by Colleen Keating

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When I took these photos in the Edna Hunt Sanctuary in Eastwood Sydney NSW while on an early morning walk with Millie (yes I am pleased Millie is there standing with me mesmerised. This was an epiphanic moment for me at the time in 2012  .  I actually stood in  it and it was like the ephemeral thing of  grace falling all around me.  I had to go back and retrieve these photos  to share here on my blog as I had a new experience this morning The story is below .

Komorebi (木漏れ日): Sunshine filtering through the trees

The cello’s dappled flow, with  the guitars sharp strings of light-fall, in the new music by Alisha Redmond  played on the ABC this morning caught my attention for further study. It was titled Komorebi. I googled the word only to find it is  a Japanese word  coined to describe that light that shimmers through leaves and plays its music too on the footfall of your bush track swaying rhythm to the whim of wind at the time. 

There isn’t really an English  word equivalent: we speak of dappled, filtered, light. Spiritually we can speak of our connection with nature, symbolising a harmony that can inspire feeling of awes, tranquility, and sublime beauty. The sight of Komorebi – the dappled sunlight, the shifting shadows, and the leaves aglow with the radiant light – is something that resonates deeply with me. Once walking with Millie in the Sanctuary I  used to live near  the experience of komorebi  was like an epiphany for me at a certain time in my life. 

I googled the word Komorebi to find it defined as

Komorebi 木漏れ日 (pronounced kō-mō-leh-bē) Literally, “sunlight leaking through trees”  this word describes the beauty and wonder of rays of light dappling through overhead leaves, casting dancing shadows on the forest floor.

Another definition states, Japanese term “Komorebi”, for which no simple English translation exists. Yet it is a distinct phenomenon, that anyone who spends time among trees will have enjoyed. roughly translates as “the scattered light that filters through when sunlight shines through trees”. It is made up of three “Kanji” or Chinese characters: “tree” or “trees”, “leaking-through” or “escape”, and “light” or “sun”.

Thank goodness for google for then I met  an  Arboriculturist  on a site called AWA and he becomes poetic doing the research I was going to do as he writes:

Komorebi is especially noticeable when the sun is low, and mist or smoke can add to the effect. The impact of Komorebi to the observer can range from creating a pleasant ambiance for a walk through the woods, to generating feelings of awe – which in the right place at the right time – verges on the transcendental. As an arboricultural consultant, I spend more time than most looking at trees when undertaking tree surveys for planning, and occasional experiences of Komorebi have caught me unaware, and have momentarily transformed the most uninspiring trees in development sites, into something special.

Less technical and more poetical attempts have been made in the English language to capture the event. Without a suitable term, several poets and authors felt compelled to invent their own words:

Dylan Thomas called it “windfall light”, in his poem “Fern Hill”, writing:

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins created the term “shivelight” for: “the lances of sunshine that pierce the canopy of a wood”’.

The author C.S. Lewis was a fan of these “shafts of delicious sunlight” or “Godlight”, writing: “Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are patches of Godlight in the woods of our experience.”

Despite their efforts, none of these words have caught on.

Komorebi, like several similar terms, highlights the influence of nature and aesthetics that is unique to Japanese culture. 

Perhaps, beyond poets and physicists, there is no need for an English equivalent. The experience – of observing sunlight through trees – might be enough. Indeed, the absence of a comparable word allows respite from the taxonomic rumination that occurs in most other aspects of life, helping Komorebi remain as one of life’s “pure and spontaneous pleasures”.  https://colleenkeatingpoet.com/5925-2/

Adam Winson (Chartered Arboriculturist,)   Photos: Lars van de Goor

POEM IN MAY

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Michael and I taking a “turn in the shrubbery” as Jane Austen recommends many times in her writings. For us it meant a walk around the block . . . but what beauty to behold

POEM IN MAY

“Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness /close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;     from John Keats Ode to Autumn

Autumn 2019 has been the most beautiful autumn ever.  For me that is because the summer warmth has lingered. And  so the colour has given us its rich glory in  somewhat balmy days.

Sometimes I wonder how many  more autumns will my eyes behold and can they get any more crisp and brisk and sweet in harmony of tone and memory.

If the colours  of autumn were music notes 

the sound  would be a mellow humming tune 

with a back ground of bird song crickets and frogs  

and our wonderful powerful owl 

that comes to perch each evening 

on the cedar tree  

that brushes against our kitchen window. 

We have been vegging  (defined as to relax in a mindless way) on Jane Austen this past week 

and enjoying Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. (Hugh Grant)

We have two copies of Pride and Prejudice one with Colin Firth  as Darcy  It was a BBC series and went for hours and one with Matthew Macfadyen and Keira Knightley.

For Jane Austen, back then, “taking a turn in the shrubbery” is a way of moving both literally and metaphorically “in the proper circles.” In making this daily circuit, women observe the boundaries of taste and convention; reconcile past, present, and future; and redraw the lines of social connection.

For Austen and for her characters, walking is a habitual part of daily life. In letters written in 1805 and in 1806, Austen says, “we do nothing but walk about” and “we walk a good deal”

Hence  in accordance with our Jane Austen motive, Michael and I  have ‘taken a  turn in the shrubbery’ . . . . that is a constitutional walk around the block and heaven was in the oak trees at the end of the street. The crunch of leaves under foot and the sprinkle of leaves that fell silently around us like confetti with their  aura of colour, They fell silently and obediently at the slight whim of the air and the still quiet press of the branches.

In Dylan Thomas’ wonderful Autumn poem  it was his thirtieth year to heaven hence he can speak of being in his summer at noon watching the autumn colour around him.

I would like to say I stand here in summer noon though all below me lay leaved  in Autumn blood but I would have to say to be truthful,  I stand in autumn time with it leaved all around me still singing my name in the sky , still falling like tears and leaved with autumn blood  under my feet. But his next sentiment I sing with all my heart, he marvelled his birthday away up on the hill looking down on his town bathed in October blood   (October of course because it is Wales that is  his autumn: here it is May I am standing in right now, writing this)

O may my heart’s truth

Still be sung

On this high hill in a year’s turning.  from Dylan Thomas Poem in October

The coloured leaves I carried with me . All the music of an octave.

Out the windows

Music in the colour. Little Miss E and my heart ringing for joy . . .  Beauty is all around

the smell of parsley

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When Emily, transported to heaven in Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town is asked what she misses most on earth she says, “The smell of parsley” And in Under Milkwood Dylan Thomas has one of his dead ship-wrecked sailors call out from the underworld
“What is the smell of parsley/”

Parsley apparently was growing wildly in the Mediterren Basin before man. It is a herb so common, like other ordinary things such as youth, such as spring,
we miss them only when they’re gone.

The message for me is enjoy life for it is short. Take time to smell the roses, to smell the parsley , remember to be as much as you can in the present moment so when your time is up you have no regrets. You have the beauty and love with you always.

parsley

the smell of parsley

tend the garden
after the rains
knee deep
in wet grass
up to your elbows in soil
and worms
and snails
and ruff of compost

marvel at the ramble
of a pumpkin vine
a stray seed gone free

linger in the fragrance
of chives and basil
coriander rocket and mint

and the smell of parsley

what is the smell of parsley?

savour their bouquet
be jubilant
with the flirt of white moths
and the canticle on the branch above
dwell on your knees
as if in prayer
tending the garden

The Smell of Parsley

colleen General , , , ,

This is the fourth section of my Poetry Anthology.  This was the intended name of the book of poetry originally, before the decision was made for the more apt  title:

A Call to Listen.

The Smell of Parsley comes from a quote in the the play Under Milkwood by the poet Dylan Thomas. The blind Captain Cat dreams  of the  drowned sailors from the swamped S.S. Kidwelly and from the after-life the first sailor asks  him loudly and rather whimsically  ‘What’s  the smell of  parsley?  The message I got from this . . . take time to enjoy the senses here on earth for when we die we could miss them.  In Wilder’s play Our Town the  dead character Emily is asked what she misses about life the most , and she answers “I miss the smell of parsely”  Hence The Smell Of Parsely seemed an appropriate title for this section of the book which deals with  the senses including autumn and winter and jacarandas and moments in the garden. Enjoy the next  9 poems.